kiete yuku (fading away)
by Yui Miyamoto
Summary: Ritsuka orders, "For one day, don't tell me you love me."


**fandom: loveless**  
 **title: kiete yuku.**  
 **pairing: soubi + ritsuka**  
 **rating: pg-13**  
 **Description - Ritsuka orders, "For one day, don't tell me you love me."**

 **Disclaimer - Loveless belongs to Kouga Yun. I've fallen into its clutches and I don't want to save myself from it...**  
 **However, the haiku, Megumi and Shinta are mine.**

 _Me wo tojite,  
'koko' ni irenai  
Muri. Kokoro._

 **kiete yuku. (fading away.)  
by miyamoto yui**

My body convulses involuntarily. I am shivering in the iciness.  
Even though I am inside of my house, it's colder here than it is in the rain gushing as fast as when a samurai cuts on flesh with a sword.

I hold myself closer and closer, trying to insulate the heat.

I close my eyes tighter than ever before.  
Maybe if I shut my eyes, everything will go away. That's what I thought when I was a kid.

I look like a child,  
but I'm no longer one.

Poundpoundpoundpound!  
It echoes the fast-paced beating of my heart and the dripping rain outside my open balcony.  
Poundpoundpoundpound!

I press my hand against my heart to make sure that I am still here.

"Ritsuka? Ritsuka? You were supposed to eat dinner with Mommy!"  
Still keeping my eyes crunched, I calmly answer back while trying not to give hints of my trembling, "I told you through your door that I wasn't feeling hungry today."

"You didn't come back on time today, Ritsuka."

Her tone is grave, out for blood and skin. Without saying it straight to my face, with this action, she tells me a multitude of things. She, who pushed me out of her belly, claims that she has total control over me, even permeating to that of the soul instead of just blood and bones.

The inhumane banging against the door suddenly stops.

I gulp in anticipation.

As if it's timed, I can hear Soubi's voice in my head. He's telling me, "Sans amour."  
Yes, my name appears to be 'Loveless'.

I hate that name.  
It's so damn appropriate.

"I've been here, Mom. You're the one who seems to forget I'm here."  
I'm lying to her in the literal sense. I'm telling the absolute truth in another.  
She doesn't have to know one or the other, just like when one of my hands hold onto Soubi's and the other one slaps him away at the same time.

I press my wet back against the wall, putting all my pressure on it so that I can feel that I am still living in this body. I won't float away, even though I want to.

I want to disappear in that rain.

Creak.

I open my eyes to find that that exit is now being blocked.

He's soaking wet. Droplets are flooding my floor, and my eyes shift in confusion at the voice behind the door saying, "Open the door so that I can give you your dinner, Ritsuka" and the silent figure staring into me with his eyes demanding, "Why did you leave without me?!"

There is no way to escape.  
Any way I turn to, I am perpetually trapped.

Seimei, Soubi, Mother...  
...newspaper, computer, school...  
...my soul, my heart, my mind.

 _/His voice made the timid reality shake: "A declaration of war."  
I shook my head even though I said with my mouth, "Soubi, there is no other way."_

'La verite' was the name of that group; a group made of a pair of twins, boy and girl, so alike that I couldn't tell what gender was what or if their voices belonged to two different people.

It reminded me of Seimei and myself for some reason. That's why I was trying to get away.

"Defend." His words were always so precise and clear.  
So direct and exact.

As pointed as a sharpened knife.

"Don't lose courage, Shinta!" the woman said while patting her brother's shoulder with her hand. He held onto it while chanting, trying to push through Soubi's spells.

I had never seen another group so devoted to one another.  
Foolishly, I began to wonder, '"What did we look to other people?"

Pushing through, it's so sudden when the familiar chains clasped onto me.  
Click, click, click.

"Restriction," I mumbled as Soubi's usually collected eyes briefly turned to mine with a troubled expression on his face. He winced a bit and then calmed down again.

"Just bear with it a little."

/"That's just how mom is. Don't worry about it, Ritsuka." Seimei tenderly touched my ears in between his index finger and thumb. "Just bear with it a little more..."/

 _"Megumi, don't worry so much! Just keep on doing what you do best!"  
And the boy smiled at her even though he was holding onto his elbow with sweat pouring down his face like a fountain._

Was this jealousy?  
For the first time in my life, I envied the atmosphere between those two people. I grabbed onto Soubi's black coat in between my small fingers.

I grabbed him as he kept on moving his mouth with words that I didn't want to understand at the moment. My hands crept up his chest and I tippy-toed so that I could grab onto his collar.  
His eyes were still fixated on the enemy as they watched us while glaring, unlike the shocked, wide eyes our opponents always had.

"Your a disgraceful sacrifice! Using it like that?! You're worse than your borrowed fighter!"

My eyes squinted as I pulled Soubi's lips to touch mine.

"I love you," he whispered and I twitched as he began to chant all over again.

Don'tsaythatdon'tsaythatdon'tsaythatdon'tsaythat...!

I squinted my eyes as I held onto his clothing with my hands and swung him a little, but his iron will continued on.  
"Why do you have to say things like this?" My dying heart came out through my mouth and said these words before I could swallow them back in.

I wanted to vomit.

That's why I left as soon as we 'won'.

It began to rain relentlessly and I ran back home. I scraped my knees because I fell so many times. I pounded my body onto the wall and hugged myself as soon as I came back.

In a small mantra, I repeated, "You wouldn't understand."/

He takes steps towards me while she pounds in a short, rhythmic pattern of three. It's so timed that it scares me because they are both in sync to one another, whether or not they both realize it.

"Ritsuka. Ritsuka? Ritsuka! Ritsuka. Ritsuka? Ritsuka!"

He stands in front of me and then slides on the wall to sit next to me. Even though I want to protest, my body accepts his warmth when he pulls me into his lap. My back is against his wet chest.  
Protectively, he holds me while I cup my hands over my small ears.

He blows into my cat ears.  
"Soubi..." I close my eyes.

He nibbles on my right one and I am warming up faster than I ever expected him to make me.  
It's in the wrong way, but I don't care anymore.

She's still at the door. Mother isn't giving up. I can't tell her to go away.  
I'm broken and I can't fix myself up.

His tongue touches the inside of my ear.  
My cheeks are now flushed. "Stop..."

"Tell me how. You're not being very specific," his voice whispers and penetrates inside of me much more than I want it to.

"I don't know how to."  
He holds me tighter.

Why does some strange guy say that he loves me and it's under my brother's orders? He's not supposed to 'love' me, but he keeps on telling me that he does.  
He doesn't have to...

...and I don't want to believe him.

And my mother is outside of that door. Mothers are supposed to love their children. It's supposed to be in their genes, their blood, their instincts. And yet, I've not heard her say those words to me.

I'm so confused.  
I don't understand anything at all...

I order, "For one day, don't tell me you love me."

Slowly, I take my hands down as he stops nibbling on my ear. He presses his cheek against mine affectionately.

 _/"I want to be with you, Ritsuka-kun, because I like you!" Yuiko said.  
She said it so freely, but she seemed to mean it when I watched her grab my hand to go to the library.  
Wasn't there a catch? There was always something to give in exchange for this thing called 'love'._

That was what I couldn't grasp about her./

I didn't ever like those words: 'love' or 'like'.  
To me, they meant the same as 'abhor' and 'infliction'.

For now, finally, she gives up and the rain continues to hammer the earth outside my balcony.  
"Hold me tighter, Soubi," I tell him, but he already did so without me saying anything.

I can still see their eyes before they disappear.  
'La verite' vanishes while regarding me in disbelief...

 _/"How can you be so powerful when you're so empty?!" the girl named Megumi screamed at me with her eyes never leaving mine. Her brother Shinta shouted at Soubi, "When you're too exact with your words, there'll be a time when they won't defend you anymore!"_

They were engulfed in a bright orange light, as if burned by flames.

As soon as they were gone, you turned to me and frantically reached out your hands for my arms. "Are you okay, Ritsuka-kun?"

I shook my head slowly.

I was going insane.

Tears were running down my cheeks and with my hands in fists, I pulled away. I ran as fast I could while he stood there in the rain soaking him.

"I'll never be okay.  
Never ever be okay..."

The same question from so many different people, said in the same pitying, annoying way.../

I quietly ask while watching the curtains move, "Soubi? What does 'la verite' mean?"

Blowing into my ear, he seriously replies, "It means 'the truth'."

I nod my head as I close my eyes. He continues to hold me. I lean on him while pointing my head up towards the ceiling so that my tears won't fall down.

When will I ever get to breathe?  
When can I stop fighting back?

I'm so tired already of all this,  
trying to find what that stupid word means,

'love'.

I hold what's left inside of myself, even if there's nothing much remaining.  
I want to believe in what I've come to realize. So, I embrace it even if it doesn't make sense and when it ultimately hurts me.

Why do we hold onto lies?  
Is it because that's all we have?

He told me he'd 'always be with me'. That was love, wasn't it?  
But he left.

His corpse was delivered to my desk, a gift by an anonymous mailer.

 **Loveless will never come.**

And then she told me that all I had to do was always listen to her. As long as I pleased her, I was 'a good son'. If I was obedient, she would care about me as mothers were prescribed to be.  
But when I did, she didn't pay attention to all that I did 'right'. She scolded and killed me for everything I did 'wrong'.

When I wouldn't 'listen', I lost her 'favor'.

 **Loveless will remain.**

Then, he came and told me outright that he wanted my strength. If I gave it to him, he'd give me anything in return. I just had to tell him what to do.  
Now, from 'listening', I was being 'listened to'. Instead of 'favors', I had to make 'orders'.

 **Ritsuka will stay forever.**

They all said it was 'love' and yet they were all inconsistent.  
And they expected me to understand when they were all older than me?

 _You_ were supposed to tell _me_!

My tears finally fall on either side of my cheeks and I hate myself for each of them.

Your hand goes up my shirt as you lick each of my tears away. I blush as my skin begins to turn into fire ready to consume me.

Your hands hold onto the skin under the wet clothing. They wrap around my waist and hold me closer while you breathe into my ear.

"Why do you always do this to me?"  
"You told me I couldn't say it."  
"Why do you listen to me when I don't want you to?"

No, I don't understand at all...

The rain is a blanket that suffocates the entire world while he breathes into my ear, and I silently choke from the inside.

Little by little...  
I won't even have myself.

"Sans amour," I mumble in a perfect accent.  
How fitting.

"I don't believe that's right," he tells me with such a strong conviction that I've never seen from him before.  
He looks upset and decisive with sincerity.

His words are melting my heart again. I can't help but want to believe in them.

You kiss my soft ear.  
"Even if you won't believe me,  
this name that was given to you before you were born...

...I will slowly erase it."

Outside, the rain continues to submerge the world slowly but surely. Inside, I'm burning from the acidity of my bittersweet feelings.

"But if you erase it, I will have nothing."

Like sand swallowed up by the waves, when there's nothing left...

 **Ritsuka will disappear.**

 **Owari.**

Author's note - In trying to emulate the atmosphere of the manga, the structure of this text seems almost bare. (It reminds me a lot of Clover by Clamp, btw.) I kept on thinking, how could I transfer the beautifully simple, yet meaning-filled pictures into text and into the minds and hearts of the future readers of this fic? The manipulation of the rhetoric structure was my response.  
But visually, this story was built from a picture I had in my mind: Ritsuka in the middle of seeing Soubi (a stranger who loves him) at the balcony and Ritsuka's mother (who is outside his locked door). It nearly drove me insane. I knew I had to compose a fic for all of my distorted thoughts.

Therefore, I hope you have enjoyed this confusing, yet very intimate piece with me.

love,  
yui

translation of my haiku -  
 _Shutting my eyes,  
there is no entering 'here'.  
It's impossible. The heart._

Tuesday, April 19, 2005  
5:06 AM


End file.
